Angry Teachers Take Protest to College Board

Venting their frustrations over stalled contract negotiations, scores of Ventura County’s community college teachers angrily confronted district trustees on the steps of the district administration office Tuesday evening.

Arriving at 6 p.m. for the closed portion of their monthly board meeting, the five trustees found they first had to fight their way through crowds of faculty members waving picket signs and demanding to know when their contract dispute will be settled.

“We’re going to let them know that there’s not going to be any business as usual at this district until we settle the contract,” said John Wagner, a Ventura College instructor. “We’ve seen chancellors and trustees come and go in this district when they don’t treat their employees right. They’re expendable.”

College Trustee Gregory P. Cole dismissed the faculty protest as an insignificant factor in his outlook on contract negotiations. “I don’t think it has any effect at all,” he said.

But Pete Tafoya, another trustee, said he hopes teachers and administrators will soon return to the bargaining table. “I respect their position,” he said of the protesters. “I hear them.”

The teachers and the district began negotiating the 1993-94 contract last April. The talks broke down early in the fall and the two parties have not met at the negotiating table since November.

The faculty, which has not had a raise since the 1990-91 school year, has asked for a 3% raise and a cost-of-living increase. The district wants to keep teachers’ salaries at their present levels while cutting health benefits and asking for other job concessions.

With contracts talks at an impasse, the faculty union had also planned separate, informational pickets at each college for Tuesday morning.

A fierce, cold wind, however, kept all but the most determined teachers indoors at Moorpark and Ventura colleges, teachers said. A protest at Oxnard College was canceled after the organizers got sick, union representatives said.

“I’m going to suffer for the cause,” joked Richard Edwards, a Moorpark College English teacher, as he passed out pamphlets to students and shivered from the wind chill.

But while passionate instructors scuttled their coffee and lunch breaks to distribute flyers, many students at the colleges said they still did not know what the protests were about.

“I’m going to wait to hear the other side of the story,” said Bobbie Lopez, a Moorpark College student holding a white and black pamphlet outlining the teachers’ grievances. “This is the first I ever heard of it.”